No Nice Way To Say It: The Olympic Mascot Looks Like A Penis

There was a great bit on JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE earlier this week about the Olympic mascot for the London Games, which officially open tonight.  There are actually two of them Wenlock and Mandeville and they are supposed to be two drops of steel, which Kimmel says appropriately "makes no sense at all".  Agreed.

When he showed an image of the one on the right (Wenlock I think?) and asked some folks walking down Hollywood Blvd. what they thought it was, the majority though it looked just like a penis.  Seriously.

This would not be the first time an Olympic mascot has caused some concern. There was the weird Izzy from the Atlanta Games, who garnered the unfortunate nickname "Sperm In Sneakers".  But with stories about all the sex going on in the Olympic Village, maybe it's totally appropriate. So let the games begin...

Did London Grindr Really Crash Because Of Olympians?

I saw a headline which I initially thought was something from The Onion: "Gay Dating App Crashes As Olympic Athletes Arrive."  This was from THE SUN, a notorious tabloid in the UK. But despite the craziness of this statement, it's factually true. Grindr, a gay dating app, did crash over the weekend at the same time that athletes from around the world were arriving in London for the kickoff of the 2012 Olympics, which start this Friday.  The outage started in East London where a lot of athletes are staying.

Grindr's most popular city is London, with 350,000 users, and the speculation is that the arrival of thousands of athletes caused the system to overload. However, not all Olympians are gay.  In fact, I would argue that very few of them are....maybe 7-10% if you take the usual statistical model. It's possible it was just a busy sexy summer weekend in London and it crashed, just as the athletes happened to show up. Friends in NYC w/iPhones report that Grindr crashes/freezes are becoming more common as the service grows more popular. 

Anyway, it does make for a good headline though....and it has been racing around the internet today because of it.  

Figure Skating Fashion Disasters

Tonight is the men's figure skating finals, sure to feature some interesting uses of sparkles and faux fur.  The figure skating world has become known for its sometimes questionable fashion choices, so much so that they were thoroughly spoofed in the feature film BLADES OF GLORY.  


This week, Time magazine put together a handy compilation of the Top 10 Worst Figure Skating Outfits.  One of them was from Sunday's night's pairs finale, the happy/sad clown duo of wacky Germans who won the bronze.  With Johnny Weir's penchant for fur and Evan Lysacek's love of feathers, who knows what fashion treats this evenings competition may hold.  The show begins at 8.